Since my prejudice as a programmer is that almost any abstraction is likely to be useful, then since taxonomies tend to reveal interesting abstractions, they will very likely be useful. How could they not? At worst a taxonomy will be found to be uninteresting and unrevealing of underlying design principles. In that case, we wasted our time in building the taxonomy. But I would bet that developing ABM taxonomies will turn out to worth the effort. I can't imagine an argument that says *a priori* that it won't be. How could anyone possibly know that?
-- Russ On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Nicholas Thompson < nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Hi, Russ, > > Thanks for your interesting response. > > Well, the same argument could be made, could it not, against trying to > gather information about human evolution. After all, it matters not how we > got here, but who we are, now that we are here. However, in evolutionary > psychology, I have always been soft on the value of evolutionary study for > understanding human psychology because much of what we do makes more sense > in terms of where we came from than it does in terms of where we are. > > But, I am not sure the same argument works for the history of agent based > modeling. I have never heard any agent based modeler claim that he or she > gives a rat's ass about how we got where we are in that domain. Might it > illuminate how we got "stuck" in some way or other? I dunno. I just dont > know enough about it. > > But all of this is aside from the question of the value of Taxonomy. > Evolutionary considerations aside, are there natural kinds of ABM;s And > would a cladistic analysis of model types be useful for programmers trying > to decide what sort of approach to use to a new problem. In the ABSENSE of > an interest in history, is there anything useful that taxamonies can tell > us? > > that is the question I was asking. > > Thanks again for helping me clarify, > > NIck > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, > Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> > *To: *nickthomp...@earthlink.net;The Friday Morning Applied Complexity > Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> > *Sent:* 1/3/2009 2:16:02 PM > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Callling all cladisticists > > Hi Nick, > > What's wrong with this argument? > > My wife teaches what's known as Early Modern English, which means English > literature, culture, etc. in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She is > interested in how people thought about things in her period as well as how > those ways of thinking developed from previous periods. We are continually > arguing about the value of that sort of study. If you are interested in the > history of ideas or culture, it certainly has some value. But if you are > interested in the best current thinking about a subject, why should you care > how people thought about it 4 centuries ago? Do I really care about > Aristotelian physics, for example, if I want to know how the physical world > works? I would say, "No" what I really want to know is what the best current > physicist think. > > Why isn't that same argument relevant to ABMs? What one really wants to > know is how we currently think about ABMs, not the history of the > development of ABMs that got us there. If that history makes it easier to > understand the current best thinking, so much the better. But it is only in > the service of the current best thinking that history is useful when what > one wants is to know the current state-of-the-art. > > -- Russ > > > On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson < > nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > >> All, >> >> For those of you who werent there, last friday, we got into an intersting >> discussion about the possibility of taxonomies of agent based models. Are >> there only a few basic types? Are many apparently different agent based >> models, deployed for widely different purposes, fundamentally only subtle >> variations? >> >> Two positions were taken, Theirs and Mine. They argued that any such >> classification system must be essentially arbitrary and useful only for the >> narrow purposes for which it was disigned. Me argued that there MUST (note >> the use of modal language) be a natural taxonomy of abms. In ABM's, there >> must be "natural kinds". You should know that Me has never written a >> program longer than a seven line Word macro. >> >> Knowing Me pretty well, I surmise that his position is shaped by his >> experience in evolutionary theory where taxonomy is pretty important. >> Taxonomic systems are mostly devised to relate contemporary species, But for >> evolutionary theorists, there is a natural validator of taxonomic >> classifications, the historical record of evolution. If we took this >> analogy seriously, we would be led to try and validate classifications of >> ABM's on the history of their development, perhaps doing dna analysis on the >> code fragments that make them up? Sounds like a singularly useless >> endeavor. But if history is uninteresting in the ABM case, why is it so >> interesting in the evolutionary case. >> >> But what then about cladistics. Cladistics is a dark art of >> classification that uses a variety of obscure incantations to lable >> relations amongst species without, so far as I understand, any reference to >> evolution. Yet, as I understand it, cladistics is not arbitrary. >> >> So, I am wondering, you cladisticists out there, what would a cladistics >> of abm's look like? And should we care about it? >> >> Nick >> >> >> Nicholas S. Thompson >> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, >> Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) >> >> >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> > >
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